Posts tagged “juicing”

Day 9 of my juice fast. I’m not even liking the taste of the juice right now, so I barely drank any today. I mostly had water. Anyway, this is the extent of what I “ate”. I had a few sips of this, and a few sips of a green vegetable-based juice. Color me depressed (and starving). I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

#TeamJuicersNShit is a fancy, creative, and distinguished hashtag from the classy mind of Otis, aka @__Otis__ on Twitter. The tag represents a group of individuals on Twitter participating in a juice fast for the next 10-30 days: myself, Otis, @Cali_Skits, @Soulful_Life, and @MsJRS45. The fast consists of only consuming juices made from primarily fresh veggies, with fruits as well. No eating, and no juicing anything other than fresh fruits and veggies. My idea of juicing a steak and fried chicken had to be quickly dismissed. Otis recommended the documentary “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” to me, and that film is what prompted me to take this challenge. I can’t speak for anyone else in the group, but my reasons for starting the fast are many.

For starters, I have NEVER been a fruits/veggies eater. I mean AT ALL. My eating habits have always been bad, but they’re been especially poor as of late – eating bad foods in greater quantity and with a higher frequency. Because of this, I’m probably at the highest weight I’ve ever been in my life. One of my main goals in doing this fast isn’t simply for rapid weight loss. I know that I need to eat healthier, and I’m hoping that this fast will make it easier in the future for me to do so. I’m hoping that, once I resume eating, I’ll be better able to incorporate fruits and veggies into my diet. I’m also hoping that in developing a greater taste for fruits/veggies, that my strong desire for bad foods will decrease.

In addition to the obvious weight loss that I’m hoping to achieve, I also am hoping that pumping my body full of nothing but fruits and veggies will help with my energy. I’m ALWAYS tired. ALWAYS. No matter how many hours of sleep I get (and I’m actually getting sleep now, for the first time in a long time), I’m still sluggish. So I’m hoping that detoxing and rebooting will rid my body of the sluggish that (I’m assuming) comes from the garbage I eat, and give me a little more vigor.

So, yesterday was Day 1 of juicing. Everything I’ve read has said that the first 3 days are the most difficult. Not only will I struggle to cope with my desire for food, but I could suffer some physical side effects as well while my body adjusts. They recommend that you start juicing on a Saturday (since a lot of people don’t work on weekends). That way, you can keep stress at a minimum since it will already be a stressful time. Well, I work on all of the first 3 days of my fast. lol I didn’t care, though. I didn’t foresee any of this to be too much of a struggle. I was wrong.

My struggle didn’t really revolve around the juicing. I took my juice to work with me, and was able to sip on it periodically. I got hungry, and I craved food, but that was to be expected. The struggle came in two forms. 1. Time. It takes a lot of time and a lot of veggies/fruits to prepare very little juice. This is followed by a lot of cleaning (of the juicer). So you’re putting in a lot of time/work for a very small amount of juice. 2. My car. Was not eating stressful? Not really. Was consuming nothing but juice stressful? Nah. Was work difficult? No. But my car, however, resolved to make sure that yesterday was as difficult of a first day as possible. lol

On a day in which I wanted to keep stress levels low, my car decided that it wanted to go haywire on my way to work. On the stress-level scale, there are few things higher than car trouble. It didn’t help that I had gotten my brakes fixed two days earlier, and I had (and still have) every reason to believe that the people I took it to fu…screwed something up. But that’s another story for another day. So now I’m at work – hungry – worrying myself about how I’m going to get home, how I’m going to get to work the next day, the cost of repairs, and the possibility of it being beyond repair. I went out on my lunch break and drove it around and thought, “Eh, I think I can get this home. I just won’t take the freeways.” That plan went well until I got about 4 miles away from home. Then everything went to shit. By the time I finally got home, all I wanted to do was go to bed.

But I had to make juice for today. DAMN IT!

This entire situation delayed the posting of my #febphotoaday pics (which had been stockpiling), and only served to make Day 1 of juicing about as difficult as it could possibly be. On the plus side, even though the juices I’ve made have been primarily vegetable based, they still taste quite good. (They look horrendous, though.) I have yet to try any recipes (I probably will do that later today). The batch I made for today consisted of kale, celery, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, apples, 1 lemon, and a couple blueberries. All of those things, and the entire batch will be gone before the day is out. lol I would have never thought that the actual juice consumption would be the easiest part of this process considering that I never eat vegetables, but here we are. Anyway, see you guys tomorrow with tomorrow’s #febphotoaday post.